Bidding, burgers and a banjo

Ever since we went to our first auction, the auction house had been sending us a catalogue every time a new one comes along. This seems to happen every fortnight. Mostly they take place during the week but the latest one is on a Saturday so we decided to go. And that Saturday was today.

The auction was for furniture, glass, fine porcelain, statuary and a quite wonderfully bizarre church steeple that I was rather keen on. I thought it would look perfect in the Crazy Bed. I didn’t like my chances though because the estimate started at £500 but you never know.

So, we bought tea and boiled fruit cake and took our seats. There was a lot of seats, as opposed to the last time we came when we had to stand up. Funnily enough, two of the occupied chairs were actually auctioned. The auctioneer said he was glad to see some humans in the room because he’d recently held an auction with only phone and Internet bidding which he said was quite lonely. Even so, there wasn’t a lot of us.

So the auction progressed with bids flying everywhere on pieces of furniture which went from attractive to downright ugly at prices which defied explanation.

Then came the glass which also sold for weird prices. Weirdest of all was the pair of glasses one of which had no stem because it had been broken off. So, basically, completely useless. They sold for a decent price.

We quite fancied an enamel picture of Yum Yum from The Mikado. The estimate started at £2,000 so we knew we wouldn’t be going home with it. And not to be disappointed, we didn’t. There were also some lovely little Meissen figurines that Mirinda quite liked. We did manage to bid on one of them but quickly withdrew when the price quickly passed our limit.

As it turned out, we did manage to win the bidding on some lovely crockery pieces (mainly small bowls) which I’ll use for finger food. Apparently I was quite sneaky with my paddle because Mirinda missed my bidding expertise.

Sadly we didn’t stay long enough to see what the church steeple went for (or the odd little Biggles clock) because the arrow of time insisted we go somewhere for lunch. Somewhere turned out to the Holly Bush in Frensham where we had a delicious burger each before heading home to the insane puppies.

I was still recovering (a bit) from last night so had a bit of a snooze on the lounge while Mirinda did some DBA work.

At about 6 we headed up to the castle to give the dogs a chance to stretch their legs and to wake me up in time to go into town to see a folk duo called Megson.

I’d seen Megson advertised on Twitter (I follow someone who follows them). They are on a ‘Churches and Chapels’ tour which includes the United Reform Church in Farnham. At first I was a bit concerned it might be some weird cult band who indoctrinates with their lyrics before sending you out into the world as some brainwashed automaton. This was clearly not the case.

Megson is a husband and wife duo (Debs and Stu Hannah) who hale from Teesside. They perform original and traditional folk songs and they are superb. Debs has the loveliest voice which Stu blends in with perfectly. And Stu’s enthusiasm on his stringed instruments (guitar, mandolin and banjo) is fantastic. To say we thoroughly enjoyed them would be an understatement.

As well as the music and songs, they were very good at the between-song chat, something much appreciated by the audience.

We left the gig wondering when they’ll be coming back. In the meanwhilst, here’s a link to their website.